EVERY SPRING the students of the École Spéciale competed for the Prix du Amphithéâtre, which brought its winner a gold medal worth a hundred francs, the admiration of the other students, and a measure of prestige for the winner’s curriculum vitae. Last year’s prize had gone to the beautiful Lucia for her design of a reinforced-concrete apartment building. This year’s subject was an urban gymnasium for Olympic sports: swimming, diving, gymnastics, weightlifting, running, fencing. It seemed to Andras a ridiculous notion to design a gymnasium while Europe edged toward war. Refugees poured into France from fractured Spain; the Marais had become a swamp of asylum-seekers. Hundreds of thousands more had been detained at the border and sent to internment camps in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Every day brought bad news, and the worst always seemed to come from Czechoslovakia. Hitler had told the Czech foreign minister that the nation must take a more aggressive approach to its Jewish problem; a week later the Czech government threw Jewish men and women out of their university professorships and civil-service jobs and public-health positions. In Hungary, Horthy followed suit by calling for a new cabinet that would support a stronger alliance with the Axis powers. It wouldn’t be long, newspaper columnists speculated, before the Hungarian parliament passed new anti-Jewish laws, too.

In the face of such news, how was Andras supposed to design a swimming pool, a locker room, a yard for fencing practice? Late one night he sat in the studio with an open letter on the table before him, his drawing tools still in their box. The letter had come earlier that day from his brother Mátyás:

12 February 1939

Budapest

Andráska,

Anya and Apa have just told me your great news. Mazel tov! I must meet the lucky girl as soon as possible. Since it seems you’ll be in France for the foreseeable future, I will have to join you there. I’m saving money already. By now you’ve heard from our parents that I have left school. I am living in Budapest and working as a window trimmer. It’s a good trade. I make 20 pengő a week. My best client is the haberdasher on Molnár utca. I heard from a friend that their old window trimmer had quit, so I went there the next day and offered my services. They told me to trim the window as a trial. I made a hunting display: two riding suits, one cloak, four neckties, a hunting blanket, a hat, a horn. I finished in an hour, and in another hour they had sold everything in the window. Even the horn.

Budapest is grand. I have many new friends here and perhaps one girlfriend. Also a fabulous dance teacher, an American Negro who calls himself Kid Sneeks. A month ago I saw him at the Gold Hat with his tap-dance team, the Five Hot Shots. After the show I stayed to meet the star. With the help of my girlfriend, who speaks a few words of English, I told him I was a dancer and asked him to take me on as a pupil. He said, Let’s see what you can do. I showed him everything. On the spot he gave me the English nickname of Lightning and agreed to teach me as long as he’s in Budapest. And his show is so popular it’s been held over another month.

I know you will scold me for quitting gimnázium, but believe me I am happier now. I hated school. The masters punished me for my bad attitude. The other boys were idiots. And Debrecen! What a place. Not the country nor the city, not modern nor quaint, not home nor a place I would want to make my home. In Budapest there is a better Jewish gimnázium. If I can, I will transfer my records and finish my studies there. Then I will come to you in Paris and go onto the stage. If you’re kind to me I will teach you to tap-dance.

Do not worry about me, brother. I am fine. I’m glad you are also fine. Don’t marry before I get there. I want to kiss the bride on your wedding day.

Love,

Your M ÁTYÁS

He read and reread the letter. I will finish my studies. Come to you in Paris. Go onto the stage. How did Mátyás expect any of those things to happen if Europe went to war? Did he read the newspapers? Did he expect that the world’s problems might be solved through tap-dancing? What was Andras supposed to write in return?

He heard footsteps approaching in the hall; it was the middle of the night, and he hadn’t arranged to meet anyone. Without thinking, he opened his pencil box and reached for his sharpening knife. But then the footsteps resolved into a familiar tread, and there was Professor Vago in his evening clothes, leaning against the doorjamb.

“It’s three o’clock in the morning,” Vago said. “If you wanted to read your mail, couldn’t you have done it at home?”

Andras shrugged and smiled. “It’s warmer here,” he said. Then, raising an eyebrow at Vago’s suit: “Nice tuxedo.”

Vago tugged at his lapels. “This is the last suit of clothing I own without an ink or charcoal stain.”

“So you’ve come here to spill ink on yourself.”

“Something like that.”

“Where were you, the opera?”

He plucked the rose out of his buttonhole and gave it a slow reflective twirl. “I was out dancing with Madame Vago, if you want to know. She likes that sort of thing. But she gets tired around halfway to dawn, whereas I find I can’t sleep after dancing.” He came toward the worktable and bent over Andras’s drawings. “Are these for the contest?”

“Yes. Polaner started them. I’m supposed to finish.”

“You were wise to partner with him. He’s one of our best.”

“He was unwise,” Andras said. “He chose me.”

“May I?” Vago said. He took Andras’s notebook and looked through the sketches, pausing over the drawings of the pool with its retractable roof. He flipped the page to the drawing of the natatorium with the roof open, and then back to the drawing of the same room with its roof closed.

“It’s all done with hydraulics,” Andras said, pointing out the closet that would house the machinery. “And the panels are curved and overlapped at the meeting point here, so the weather won’t come through.” He paused and bit the end of his drafting pencil, anxious to know what Vago thought. It was a design inspired as much by Forestier’s chameleonic stage sets as by Lemain’s sleek public buildings.

“It’s fine work,” Vago said. “You do your mentors credit. But why are you mooning around here in the middle of the night? If you’re going to come to school at three in the morning, at the very least you ought to be working.”

“I can’t concentrate,” Andras said. “Everything’s falling apart. Look at this.” He took a newspaper from his schoolbag and pushed it across the desk toward Vago. On the front page, a photograph showed Jewish students crowded at the gates of a university in Prague; they had been summarily disenrolled and were not allowed to enter. Vago picked up the paper and studied the photograph, then dropped it onto the worktable.

“You’re still in school,” he said. “Are you going to do your work?”

“I want to,” Andras said.

“Then do.”

“But I feel like I have to do something more than draw buildings. I want to go to Prague and march in the streets.”

Vago pulled up a stool and sat down. He took off his long silk scarf and folded it over his knees. “Listen,” he said. “Those bastards in Berlin can go to hell. They can’t kick anyone out of school here in Paris. You’re an artist and you have to practice.”

“But a gymnasium,” Andras said. “At a time like this.”

“At a time like this, everything’s political,” Vago said. “Our Magyar countrymen didn’t let Jewish athletes swim for them in ’36, though their time trials were better than the medalists’. But here you are, a Jewish architecture student, designing an athletic club to be built in a country where Jews can still qualify for the Olympics.”

“For now, anyway.”

“Why ‘for now’?”